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Reviews
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Written by mat
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Alexei Gural’s independently produced graphic novel, Rosewater, takes place on an Earth on the brink of apocalypse where angels live as human beings in quasi-human form. They look like humans, they live like humans, they die like humans, but they still have certain angelic powers depending on how much of their cherubic life they choose to hold onto. This appears to vary depending on how many human vices the angel partakes in during their time on Earth.
Jacqueline, a member of the world-famous band Rosewater, has very few of her divine powers left after partaking in copious drug use and a serious attempt at suicide.
Anna awakes in a desert with a head injury that has caused amnesia. Jacqueline discovers Anna in the desolation and takes her under wing into the lone house in the landscape. Jacqueline reveals that they are actually in Georgia and that the rest of the world has taken on the same sandy appearance in what is referred to as “The Disintegration.” Keep in mind Rosewater was written long before M. Night Shymalan cleverly named his pretentious movie The Happening. During The Disintegration, buildings, humans and other tangibles begin turning into sand.
The only beings seemingly strong enough to survive this disaster were angels. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that the band Rosewater was the cause of it all and the world’s only hope, or ultimate destruction, lies with the band’s elusive and unstable lead singer, Rose. Turns out Jacqueline just so happens to be a member of Rosewater, and she and Anna embark on a cross-country trip to get the band back together.
The unique thing about Rosewater is that Gural, a collage artist, used live models for each of the scenes and then added an illustrative tinge to all of the photographs in a Photoshop-like program. The models were mostly shot in one apartment and then added to the backgrounds after the fact, but this lends to the overall comic book feel of the altered photographs. This method is probably what allowed Gural to produce the prolific illustrations in the 317-page novel by himself without losing sanity.
Occasionally, some of the details in smaller panels are overwhelmed by black, as if Gural was trying to create too much mood, or obscure too many background details. Sometimes it leaves the reader squinting, trying to decipher the subtleties.
There are no dialogue bubbles and occasionally the uniform lettering looks amateurish and too computer-generated. The dialogue itself is often overburdened with exposition and melodrama.
Even with those faults, Rosewater will keep your attention through most of the 317-pages, and it is a quick read, but at times, it seems like self-indulgence dreamed up by a heroin-addicted musician. Yes, only music has the power to unleash destruction upon, or provide salvation to the world. Finally, someone reaffirms that the movie Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey was not just conjecture. Then again, a few of the models work nicely. Model/actor Rebecca Van Dam, posing as Anna, has the perfect mix of facial expressiveness for the two dimensional role of the innocent amnesiac waking to apocalypse.
I will say this in all honesty, while re-reading the graphic novel for this review, an eruption of blood gushed profusely from my nose ruining several pages of the graphic novel before I could stem it.
Rosewater might just be that awesome, the kind of awesome that makes you bleed. Then again maybe my home needs a humidifier. Either way, Gural’s future work is worth keeping an eye out for as he matures as a graphic novelist. |
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Written by Joel Thomas
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Years ago, folks in hilly southern Ohio wrote ballads of heartbreak and sinners, of good men ruined by whisky and bad men ensnared by love. In his debut short fiction collection Knockemstiff, Donald Ray Pollock continues in that tradition. His characters, the residents of Knockemstiff, Ohio, find themselves bedeviled by whisky, beer, and all kinds of sex, of course, but also more modern demons.
While Knockemstiff’s stories of a semi-Southern grotesque way of life draw easy comparisons to Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews, the characters’ chemically-induced mental fogginess and narrative tones steeped in depravity will remind some readers of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, among others. In Knockemstiff, people pop speed pills, huff whatever’s available, and bulk up on ‘roids until they burst. Knockemstiff turns the notion of simplicity and “good country folk” as a central element of rural small town life on its head.
Knockemstiff’s less than finest abuse substances almost as much as they abuse each other. Fathers and husbands tower as the worst offenders. Pollock’s first story, “Real Life,” introduces one such abuser. Vernon drunkenly picks fights with his wife, son, and strangers alike. More characters follow similar codes of conduct, but plenty show off other forms of violence. Sometimes the damage comes as a way of killing time -- good ol’ boys throwing darts at a slow-witted chubby boy who craves the attention, for example. In other pieces, though, the violence takes a meaner tone, with cruel abuse turning into physical and sexual torture that ruins lives.
Pollock’s protagonists themselves tend to witness or receive the undeserved punishment more than they dish it out. The author often introduces sensitive souls misunderstood by the surrounding barbarians. By narrating stories of depressed brutality and raw, unsophisticated hedonism through the perspectives of gentler eyes, Pollock provides firsthand accounts while portraying the ranges of anger, sadness, frustration, and family tradition in which so much of the abuse wraps itself. In the aforementioned “Real Life,” Vernon’s son and favorite target, Bobby, recalls a childhood event through his adult point of view. He presents gritty realism tinged with the psychological complexities of a young boy wrestling with issues of machismo while besieged by his father’s cruelty. Likewise, “Schott’s Bridge” focuses on a central character whose naivety and curiosity deliver him into predatorial hands eager to destroy him.
Even with many of the stories centered around stubborn violent men dominating more transparent sympathetic characters, Pollock introduces only one major female protagonist. The middle-aged, wistful Sharon in “Rainy Sunday” isn’t even one of the terribly oppressed characters. She cares for her mentally ill husband who harms himself rather than her, and she occasionally helps her Aunt Joan troll for men at local bars and donut shops.
Perhaps as a reflection of Knockemstiff’s local culture, most female characters in the collection of stories remain relegated to traditional mother/nurturer roles and/or sex objects. Still, they aren’t stiff mannequins who only serve Pollock’s often bizarre plots. Readers meet women in Knockemstiff who prove to be as interesting and complex as any of the boys, men, and man-boys who live with and lust after them.
One such compelling female character emerges in Geraldine, referred to by her lover Del (through whose point of view their stories are told) as “Fish Stick Girl.” The narrator explains that “even though she was probably the best woman Del Murray had ever been with – gobs of bare-knuckle sex, the latest psychotropic drugs, a government check – he was still embarrassed to be seen with her in public” because of her mental illness, which manifested itself frequently. People nicknamed Geraldine after her trademark antic, passing out cold greasy fish sticks she kept in her purse. In one story, “Fish Sticks,” Pollock weaves her fascinating personality into a story where her plot line isn’t even the strangest part of the story. Later in the collection, he brings her back in “Assailants,” where from Del’s point of view, she’s become more of a respectable woman and nagging nurturer than a bizarre sex doll.
When portraying the area’s residents, women and men alike, Donald Ray Pollock incorporates an aspect of life shared by many characters: the issue of staying in or leaving Knockemstiff, Ohio. Several declare or bemoan their inability to leave or escape. In “I Start Over,” middle-aged lifelong resident Big Bernie Givens groans that he feels “stuck in southern Ohio like the smile on a dead clown’s ass,” one of Pollock’s many great lines.
The issue may remind some readers of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio another book of short stories based on another small Ohio town. However, whereas Winesburg’s young residents all seem to dream of leaving, Pollock presents his readers with varying views expressed by his community’s members. Some believe themselves stuck, but their own demons keep them in town. Two of the characters, for example, steal a large supply of speed they plan to sell so they can leave town, but can’t seem to stop pilfering from their own supply.
On the other hand, a few people express fear of leaving the holler, a fear that leads them to surrender or willingly dive into depravity that helps them escape. As one of them points out, “forgetting our lives might be the best we’ll ever do.” In “Dynamite Hole,” one teenager becomes so afraid of leaving that rather than obey the draft board and serve in World War II, he flees into rough, uninhabited country and stays there long after the war is over, never truly returning to his own society. Those who do leave generally find themselves in unenviable situations with unsavory characters. Two teen boys go to Florida, only to find themselves turning tricks to survive. Another teen boy hitchhikes out of town with an ill-intentioned trucker. Readers find that of those who leave, most eventually return. Pollock’s protagonists find that the transgressive prey on the innocent and slightly less depraved everywhere, and while the Knockemstiff locale proves to be no different, at least it’s home.
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Written by M.G.
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Featuring a graphic novel because its creator happens to share a name with the city that this magazine is based in is something of a stretch. Luckily, Omaha Perez created a fun and noteworthy re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes with his graphic novel, Holmes.
In Perez’s alternate, illustrated version of the classic detective story, Holmes snorts drugs, huffs ether and smokes opium as Perez exploits the fact that in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories Holmes partook in drug use, but only as recreation between cases. In this respect Perez’s version is more realistic, and is closely related to the movie From Hell in which Johnny Depp plays a Victorian-era sleuth with an opium addiction, although his character’s name is not Sherlock Holmes.
Perez crafts Holmes into a character that is all Id, a crazy frenzy of fornication and partying. Kinetically, the story resembles a gonzo journey: Holmes becomes Raul Duke (Hunter S. Thompson) and Watson becomes Dr. Gonzo as they stumble through Victorian England rather than the Las Vegas of the 1960’s to locate a head stolen from Joseph Haydn’s decomposing body by phrenologists eager to study the famed composers genius.
One expansive illustration, featuring London Bridge as a backdrop, even has Holmes crazy-eyed and yelling, “This is bat country, you fool!”
The few pages of illustrations created using a scratchboard technique are impressive, exhaustingly created and not to be missed. Overall, while glancing at the rest of the illustrations the character work may seem stilted and elementary in comparison to the scratchboard panels. However, The text and images mesh perfectly to contribute to Perez’s askew view of Holmes.
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Written by Joel Thomas
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Perhaps because he himself reviews books for a living, Jonathan Messinger probably understands that his book will be initially judged by its cover. With a title like Hiding Out and a picture of a plainly dressed twenty-something lying on a hardwood floor with his face against the wall, the cover suggests that readers can expect a collection of short stories featuring coyly confessional hip-but-awkward young adults. We ready ourselves for literary descendants of Ichabod Crane and J. Alfred Prufrock who slink into low-budget movies and listen to Sufjan Stevens.
The stories themselves, however, introduce an array of characters and adventures with no easily-labeled typical protagonist. Sure, Messinger provides a shy romantically-challenged office worker, a lovesick robot-costumed geek, and a high school poet. But we also find a rude angel, daydreaming Chinese factory workers, a compassionate janitor who becomes a rescue worker, a family of kung fu instructors, and a wolf-hunter.
Interestingly, Messinger recently published a pseudo-expert essay (not included in the book) on kung fu strategies for defeating wolves. He laughs when I ask, based on my reading of the two stories and the essay, how much of his writing is autobiographical. “It’s not very autobiographical, really. I tend to take a kernel from real life, then build a story’s vision around that.” Two of Messinger’s obsessions, he clarifies, are wolves and kung fu. He studied martial arts for 15 years, but “Winged Attack,” about a father and son who both teach kung fu, isn’t about anyone he knows. Instead, it’s based on his observation that “there’s this whole culture that goes into martial arts schools...a strange atmosphere all about controlled violence and trust.” His wolf fixation is less experience-based, but he’s fascinated nonetheless. “For me, and a lot of writers, we have these topics, themes, obsessions, and the only way to get over them is to address them,” he discloses.
With such diverse characters on display, Hiding Out’s stories themselves range from realism to absurdity. The aforementioned wolf fiasco in “Not Even the Zookeeper Can Keep Control” offers a satire on human nature bordering on a Twilight Zone kind of bizarre. On the other hand, stories like “The Birds Below” feel so real that one wonders if Messinger only changed the names. In that particular piece, the author shares, only the environment—a tree-lined suburban alley near his childhood home—is based on a particular place and time. “One Valve Opens,” according to Messinger not based on anyone in particular, reads so real that some readers have challenged the propriety of a story centered around a black high school poet written by a white author. “That’s the one I get asked about the most in a ‘what do you know?’ kind of way,” the writer informs me. “I think the implication is kind of racist, like those people are saying that black people and white people are such different creatures that I could never understand a black character.”
In addition to the “Julius” character, Messinger takes more risks throughout Hiding Out. The writer pushes against readers’ boundaries through choices in narrative voice and other prose techniques. For example, he writes “You Can Never Forget” in second person, pulling it off through relatable characters and psychological massaging. In “We Will All Write A Poem,” Messinger directly addresses the reader while telling his story, both inviting and commanding participation.
The variety of styles and voices gives the collection both breadth and depth. Messinger notes that when he compiled stories for Hiding Out, the selection diversity played a role. As a book review editor, Messinger explains, “I read a lot of short story collections. I get tired of short story collections where authors limit themselves to a very specific theme or style. I think that if you want someone to read [the collection], you want them to read the whole thing. If by the fifth story, it all sounds the same, then the reader might not keep reading.” Using a music analogy, he expounds, “I thought of it as putting together an album. My favorite albums are very far-reaching in their style and attempt to do various things, but somehow they’re able to connect and tie together.”
The album-building comparison begs the question, which artists have most influenced Messinger’s writing? “The Flaming Lips,” he replies, especially for their “aesthetic of accessible experimentation” and “how seriously they take the performer-audience relationship.” He also finds much to emulate in the music of Jonathan Richman, both solo and with the Modern Lovers, because of Richman’s ability to blend “extreme goofiness with sincerity” in particular. The stories in Hiding Out feature plenty of both.
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Written by Joel Thomas
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At first browse, Todd Dills ’ Sons of the Rapture appears easy to classify as part of a new wave of Southern Grotesque. The basic elements are all here: distempered South Carolinian family members struggling under inherited insanity and wealth; underlying racial and sexual tensions seeking to explode; deeply flawed characters willing to perform extreme feats while attempting redemption.
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